


the sun wed the storm

by WingedQuill



Series: weather patterns [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (twice!!), (twice!), Angst with a Happy Ending, Falling In Love, Festivals, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Marriage, Midsummer, Moving On, Original Character Death(s), Trans Character, Trans Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:20:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: The stretch of time between May Day and Midsummer has always marked the best and worst times in Geralt's life. It's when he went through the trials that broke him down to the bone. It's when he told Luka he loved him. It's when the two of them married, surrounded by their fellow wolves.It's when an army of humans attacked Kaer Morhen. It's when Luka died.Now, it's when he met Jaskier. He isn't sure, yet, what kind of mark this meeting will leave on his life.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Male Character(s)
Series: weather patterns [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823278
Comments: 37
Kudos: 197
Collections: Geraskier Midsummer Mini Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> God, this story took a long time to write.
> 
> Written for the Geraskier Midsummer Minibang, 2020! Thank you so much to everyone on Discord for supporting this idea and listening to me yell about it far too much. Extra special thank you to [MaliciousVegetarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaliciousVegetarian/pseuds/MaliciousVegetarian) for beta-ing this and to [thewonderfulthingaboutfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thewonderfulthingaboutfish/pseuds/Thewonderfulthingaboutfish) for making some truly gorgeous art. You're the best Sad Story Squad a writer could ask for.

_ 1240 _

If Geralt could pick one word to describe Jaskier, it would be  _ bright. _

Not so much in terms of his intelligence—who the fuck thought chasing a witcher down a dirt road away from civilization after being punched in the stomach was a  _ good idea?— _ but in terms of his clothes, his voice, the gleam of excitement in his eye when he talks about Geralt being chock-full of stories. He’s young, and endlessly looking for  _ new  _ and  _ better,  _ looking for a purpose. He has a spring to his step that Geralt is sure will fall away over the years, an optimism in his words that will definitely vanish before that.

He hasn’t felt the world’s cruelty. Not really. Sure he’s had some bread chucked at him by unappreciative tavern-goers, but he hasn’t fully realized how painful life can be. He hasn’t yet put his trust in the wrong person, hasn’t yet been hurt for no good reason at all, hasn’t yet had a loved one die before their time. He doesn’t carry pain behind his eyes, or cynicism in his smile, or wariness in his hands.

He hasn’t been crushed.

So maybe that’s why Geralt agrees to let him tag along with him. Seeing that much unrestrained naivety in one person makes him nervous, uncomfortable, scared for him even. The fact that he still sees the world as one great fairytale means that he sees no danger in throwing himself into its multitude of horror stories. Someday one of those stories is going to end very unhappily, someday the world is going to crash down around his ears. And if Geralt is there, at least that crashing down won’t be being torn to shreds by a monster.

And then they get kidnapped.

_ Fuck. _

And Jaskier…shifts. There’s no other way to describe it. All the brightness turns to burning fire, and he snarls and spits and rages against their captors, rages against how they’re treating his lute _ ,  _ treating Geralt, but never protesting how they’re treating  _ him.  _ Even as they kick in his ribs and knee him in the mouth, he doesn’t cry or scream or beg for mercy. He doesn’t act like a fresh young man unused to cruelty, having his sense of safety shattered for the first time. No, he acts like someone who’s endured this kind of thing before, who knows enough about the world’s awfulness to be indignant, furious even.

_ Protective.  _ Over Geralt.

It’s been a long, long time since someone’s been protective over him.

***

_ 1170 _

“It’s not  _ fair,”  _ Luka grumbles, pacing around their dorm room, hands flying to accentuate his point. “It’s not.”

“I know,” Geralt says from his bed.

“You fucking survived the trials,” he says, golden eyes—and that’s still taking some getting used to. Geralt keeps catching himself missing their bright blue—blazing with fury. “You survived them, same as any of those crusty old bastards, and now they want to throw you back into hell. Want to  _ kill you.” _

“They’re not gonna kill me,” Geralt says, trying to keep his voice as steady as possible, despite the anxiety squirming in his stomach, the whisper in his ear insisting that Luka is right. “They’re gonna make me stronger.”

Luka laughs, high and hysterical.

“Are they?” he asks. “Then why did every single boy last year come out of the experimental trials in a shroud? How is  _ that  _ stronger?”

The world is spinning wildly around him.

“I’ll be fine,” he says. His voice sounds very small.

“But you won’t,” Luka says. “They’ll bring you in there, and I’ll lose you, I’ll lose my best friend, I—”

“Please stop,” Geralt whispers. He wraps his arms around himself. The dreadful fear that he’s been holding off comes crashing down over him.

Luka’s face crumples.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He stops his pacing and joins Geralt on his bed, wrapping his arms around him and yanking him into a hug. Geralt buries his head in Luka’s shoulder, and he knows he’s breathing far too fast but he can’t seem to control his lungs. Luka shushes him, runs his fingers through Geralt’s hair.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and there are tears in his voice. “I didn’t mean to make this about me.”

“Please just—just let me pretend that I’m strong enough to survive this,” Geralt says. “Otherwise I’m gonna lose my mind.”

Luka takes a shuddering breath and nods against his shoulder.

“You’re the strongest person I know, Geralt,” he whispers. “If anyone can survive this, it’s you. I just wish you had a choice.”

“Me too.”

Luka’s arms tighten around him, and if this is his last night alive, Geralt is glad that he has him at least.

“I’m not letting you do this alone,” he says as Geralt drifts off to sleep. Determination floods his voice, although there’s fear there too, small and poorly buried. Gealt wants to protest, but sleep is already dragging him down, down, down, and he’s out in seconds.

He’s not surprised the next morning when, while he’s waiting with the six other boys that have been selected to die, Vesemir comes in and announces that they have a last minute addition. A volunteer.

Luka sits down on the bench next to Geralt and holds out his hand. Geralt grabs it, squeezing as tight as he can.

“Why?” he whispers. Fear is squirming in his throat. Luka can’t die. Geralt might have to but  _ gods,  _ Luka can’t die. “You know this will probably kill us both,  _ why?” _

“Like I said,” Luka said, squeezing back. “I’m not letting you do this alone.

***

_ 1241 _

He thinks he might be wrong, about Jaskier not knowing pain. That suspicion starts to grow in Dol Blathana, doubles when Jaskier murmurs “respect doesn’t make history” with an aching voice, and solidifies into certainty the first time Jaskier sees him injured.

He doesn’t react like Geralt would expect him to, cringing at the sight of blood, wincing at Geralt’s pain like it’s his own, turning away from the sight of the large gash in Geralt’s side. He just sets his jaw and nods to himself.

“Right,” he says. “Okay. What do you need? I know basic medical care, could stitch up that wound and clean it, at least, but is it different for witchers?”

Geralt stares at him for a moment. 

“Stitching isn’t necessary,” he mutters at last. It’s one thing not to flinch at blood, it’s another thing entirely to pull the edges of a wound closed. And, foolishly, he doesn’t want Jaskier to disappoint him. Doesn’t want the illusion of bravery to crumble just yet. 

“But will it help?” Jaskier asks, pulling a needle and thread out of his bag.

“Will make it heal neater,” Geralt admits. It isn’t important if it heals pretty, though. Not like anyone sees him as a pretty thing anymore.

“Then it’s necessary,” Jaskier says. He sits down in front of Geralt and starts dabbing at the wound with a damp cloth. “You don’t want a mass of scar tissue here. It could pull and hurt for years to come.”

“I know,” Geralt says. 

Jaskier’s eyes flick over his torso, taking in the scars stretching across every inch of him. Some of them had been cared for but most of them hadn’t—just doused in potions and left to come in all twisted. Geralt fights the urge to cross his arms over his chest, to hide the evidence of all that carelessness.

“I suppose you do,” Jaskier murmurs. His brow is pinched up like he has a headache. “Well. You don’t need another bit of pain, do you?”

The most painful scars are the ones that healed neatly. The ones he got in Kaer Morhen, back when it housed an army of doctors and mages. Marks from the trials, and training, and his eighteenth year—thin white lines covering his arms, legs, stomach.

The manticore sting, griffin bite, ghoul scratches, puckered and knotted and pulling at his skin, none of those hurt nearly as much to look at. But then, Jaskier isn’t a Kaer Morhen mage. This wound will not become another awful memory. It’ll just mark the time that he saved an insane bard from a rampaging kikimora, the time that said insane bard returned the favor by stitching him up.

“I don’t,” Geralt agrees, shifting so that Jaskier can have better access to the wound. Jaskier smiles at him, bright and warm, and it loosens a tension in Geralt’s shoulders.

He stitches Geralt up, chattering away all the while about various rivals that he had decimated in his university days. Geralt’s pretty sure it’s supposed to be a distraction from the pain of the needle—not that he really notices it, in comparison to the aching pulse of the wound. 

Jaskier doesn’t gag the whole time he’s closing the wound, doesn’t excuse himself to go vomit into the bushes afterwards. He stays light, calm, gentle, his touch a cool balm against Geralt’s too-hot skin. Afterwards, he shares his rations with Geralt, offers up the spot closer to the fire, and insists on taking first watch.

Geralt is being looked after.

He’s not sure if the ache in his chest is happiness or grief or some dreadful mingling of the two, but he lies down on his back, rests his hand over the wound that will heal into a painless scar, and lets himself feel safe.

***

_ 1170 _

When Geralt wakes up from the second set of trials, the first thing he’s aware of is the warm weight in the bed next to him. He can hear someone breathing, labored but even, can feel warm puffs of air on his face. He cracks open his eyes, nearly shutting them immediately again from how  _ bright  _ the world is, but is able to contract his pupils enough that he can see without wanting to die.

It still feels weird that he can do that, that he has control over that part of his body.

But his concern over the brightness is quickly washed away, because the warm, breathing thing next to him is Luka. He’s pale and sweaty, face tight with pain even in his sleep, but he’s  _ alive. _

They’re both alive.

Geralt squirms forward and buries his face in Luka’s chest, listening to the too-slow (normal now, he reminds himself, it’s normal now) beating of his heart.

They survived.

They’re witchers. They’re  _ more _ than witchers. They survived something that killed dozens of boys before them and they did it together.

Geralt squeezes his eyes shut and lets the tears spill out of him. 

“I love you,” he sniffles into Luka’s shirt. “I love you so much.”

It’s the first time he acknowledges the feelings for his best friend out loud. It’ll take him a few more years to get up the courage to say it while Luka is conscious.

***

_ 1241 _

If Jaskier is insistent about one thing, it’s that Geralt deserves to be comfortable. 

He begins his crusade sometime in the first year of their acquaintanceship— _ friendship,  _ really, but Geralt would rather avoid thinking about that for as long as possible. It starts with his realization that Geralt needs to eat a lot.  _ A lot.  _ Significantly more than the average human, more than a soldier or blacksmith or washerwoman, even. Most witchers have slower metabolisms that come with their slower  _ everything,  _ but ever since his second set of mutations, Geralt has existed in a state of almost constant hunger.

He can survive eating about as much as a very active human, but, as Jaskier repeats time and time again, survival isn’t living.

“We have enough coin to order a second helping,” he says, watching Geralt shovel stew down his throat. Geralt swallows and shakes his head.

“Don’t need it,” he mutters.

“I think you do,” Jaskier replies. This exchange has become annoyingly common.

“Don’t.”

“Geralt, I’ve seen you put away half a deer in a single sitting. You can’t honestly tell me that a single bowl of stew is enough for you.”

“Don’t wanna make people uncomfortable.” He stabs down viciously with his fork. He knows what happens if people are reminded of how different he is to them. The result is never good. 

Jaskier sighs in exasperation.

“Let them be uncomfortable,” he says. “You just saved their sorry asses from a pack of drowners. A fact which I will remind them of, loudly and very persistently, if they try and give you shit for  _ eating too much.” _

Geralt ducks his head, staring at the stew that really isn’t enough. 

“Okay,” he mumbles, shoving another piece of meat in his mouth. Jaskier  _ beams. _

“Excellent,” he says. He calls over the barmaid and asks for another serving, flirting and charming all the while. Geralt sits back and watches him work, an amused smile growing on his face as he fawns over the set of the barmaid’s shoulders. She blinks at him, bewildered, like she’s not sure if she should be flattered or offended.

It’s entertaining and it gets the attention off him, so when the stew comes, he barely thinks twice before eating it.

***

_ 1172 _

June is Geralt’s favorite month, he’s decided. It’s nice and bright and warm, but not the blistering, soul-crushing heat of late summer. The flowers have all bloomed, the trees are in full leaf, the sheep, goats, and horses are out grazing in the fields, and lightning bugs hum over the grass in the evenings.

The young witchers spend every spare moment they have outside, and Geralt and Luka are no exception, though they have to wear long sleeves so as not to burn their ridiculously pale skin. They spend hours exploring the fields and forests together, returning to their favorite spots to catch frogs, finding new berry patches, sniffing out dens of baby animals to coo over. They’re often joined by Eskel or Remus, but today it’s just the two of them. Luka has a basket that he refuses to let Geralt open, and he leads Geralt to their favorite spot—a tall pine tree in the middle of a sunlit field, far enough away from the keep that the other boys won’t bother them.

It’s quiet. One of the few quiet places left in the world, for their sensitive ears. Geralt lays back on the grass with a sigh, closing his eyes and soaking in the sun. He’ll have to move into the shade soon, but for now, he can be warm.

Luka giggles above him.

“Didn’t realize training took that much out of you,” he says. “You could’ve just said, I’d have slowed down.”

Geralt flips him off without opening his eyes.

“That isn’t very nice,” Luka says. “I guess I’ll have to eat these sandwiches all by myself, since you don’t want them.”

Sandwiches?

He opens his eyes and sits up.

“Knew that would get your attention,” Luka says. He has the basket open and is holding up a sandwich with a triumphant grin—thick bread liberally stuffed with thin slices of deer meat. Geralt’s mouth waters.

“Where did you get these?” he asks as Luka passes one over and grabs a second for himself. Geralt snatches the basket and peers inside. Half a dozen more sandwiches wait inside. His stomach growls.

“The kitchen, where do you think?” Luka snorts. He flops back against the sun-warmed earth, stuffing a bite of sandwich in his mouth.

“You stole them?” Geralt asks, eyes going wide.

“Mmhmm,” Luka mumbles through a mouthful of food. 

“You  _ know  _ the punishment for stealing food!”

He still remembers Remus, tied to the whipping post and lashed fifteen times for stealing a single honey cake. He still has the scars on his back from that, a year later, after the trials. And that was only a bit of food, Luka had practically stolen them a feast, what would they do to him? To Geralt, if he ate it?

“Hey,” Luka says. “Breathe.”

Geralt sucks in a breath through his teeth.

“I’m a hell of a lot sneakier than Remus,” Luka reminds him. Which is true. Remus is big and loud and stompy, where Luka is quick and light on his feet. “And they...Geralt, you know they’re not feeding us enough.”

Geralt looks down at the sandwich in his hands. It’s true. His stomach has been aching almost constantly since the trials. Hunger pangs keep him up at night, and he can hear Luka’s stomach growling in the bed next to him.

“What’s wrong with us?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Luka says. “Side-effect from the extra stuff probably? Along with…”

He reaches up his hand to twirl his fingers through his ridiculous looking hair. Ever since the trials it’s been growing in white, just like Geralt’s. Unlike Geralt, he refuses to cut it to get rid of the old color, leaving a sharp line at his chin where it shifts from white to brown. 

_ I want to remind them,  _ he said, when Geralt asked him about it.  _ The masters. I want to remind them what they did to us. _

Geralt nods.

“You’re probably right,” he mutters.

“Either way, we need more food than them,” Luka says. “And they weren’t  _ giving  _ us more, so I thought...I thought I could make our lives a little bit easier.”

Geralt wants to eat. He  _ does.  _ His mouth waters, his stomach churns. But the threat of the lash on his back is a powerful deterrent.

“I’ll take the fall,” Luka says. He pops the last bite of his first sandwich into his mouth and reaches for the second. “If they catch us, I mean. Come on, Geralt. Please eat.”

He won’t let Luka be lashed in his stead, but the  _ please  _ does it. He thinks he’d do anything for Luka, if he just said please. He bites down on the sandwich, and Luka grins at him with a full mouth, which is absolutely disgusting. Geralt tells him so, and Luka starts chewing open-mouthed, loud and exaggerated. Geralt shrieks, and tackles him to the ground, and the fear of the lash is forgotten. 

(Later, of course, they’re caught. Neither of them are whipped, but Luka’s hair is cut in punishment. Geralt holds him as he sobs, as he weeps at the last remaining bit of his humanity being torn away. But after that, they do get bigger portions at dinner.)

***

_ 1245 _

The hunt is going badly.

Very badly.

Badly as in, he’s already taken enough speed and strength boosting potions to make him want to throw up and vibrate out of his skin, but the ghouls are still coming and coming and coming—five then ten then twenty, circling him, and swiping at him. They can smell how toxic he is and that’s making them nervous, which is good. He’d be dead already if they weren’t.

He twirls to the side and swipes off one, two, three ghoul heads in a single motion. A few of their fellows shriek in protest, stalking towards him. A quick flash of igni has them scuttling backwards, except for one who was unfortunate enough to get caught right in the flame.

Four down. At least fifteen to go. No, more. Where are they all  _ coming  _ from?

In the tree above him, he can hear Jaskier’s heart hammering hummingbird-fast with excitement. Geralt can’t smell a trace of fear sweat, can’t hear any nervous shifting. Jaskier still thinks all is well, that Geralt is winning the fight. Probably congratulating himself on demanding to come along in the first place, crushing all of Geralt’s objections that monster hunting is _ dangerous, dammit.  _

He’ll certainly regret that once the ghouls disembowel Geralt and start circling his hiding place, and Geralt won’t even be alive to gloat about being right. If that isn’t just the most unfair thing about his impending doom.

He grunts, ducks under one ghoul and stabs another in the face, grimacing as several more take the opportunity to advance. Shit. Fuck. He whirls around, sweeping his sword in a wide circle. He can’t watch his own back, but he  _ needs  _ to, with the number of ghouls around him.

This fight would be so much easier if he just had another witcher around.

He falters at that thought, swallowing down a familiar wash of hurt as he elbows a ghoul in the face and presses igni into its skin. He needs to hold himself together, unless he wants to join— _ no.  _ A ghoul hunt is not the time to mourn. 

***

_ 1176 _

“On your left!” 

Geralt steps to the right as a blistering sheet of fire flies past him, taking out the drowner that had been creeping up on him.

“Thanks!” he calls over his shoulder. Luka grins at him, before twirling around and casting another blast of igni at a drowner he could have easily stabbed. Geralt rolls his eyes. He’s fairly sure Luka’s showing off.

Based on the heat curling in his stomach, he’s also pretty sure it’s working.

He sighs, turning his attention back to the drowners. Don’t think about Luka, all sweaty from the fight, eyes gleaming with excitement, hair tied messily back. Don’t think about how he brushed his fingers across Geralt’s arm the other day. Don’t think about how he compared Geralt’s voice to a thunderstorm—

“On your right!” 

Another blast of igni, another drowner destroyed.

“You’re distracted today!” Luka shouts. Geralt shakes his head. Fight. Right.

“Just working on my sword skills,” he says, decapitating a drowner for emphasis. “You gotta let them in close for that!”

“Uh-huh,  _ sure.  _ You let me know when staring off into space counts as ‘working on your sword skills.’”

“I was  _ concentrating!” _

Another blast of fire. Geralt groans and darts further away from Luka, pouring his full attention into the fight.

He might be showing off a bit too. Or trying to, at least. Whatever.

***

_ 1245 _

There’s a sharp breath from the tree above him. A spike of fear.

_ “Geralt!”  _

He whirls around, sword slicing through the neck of the ghoul that was about to pounce on him. His other hand flies out, forcing three more back with a blast of Aard. One hits a tree trunk with a crack and goes still. The other two shake off the blow and scramble back to their feet. 

They growl. The ones behind him scuffle closer. They’ve realized that they can’t take him on one at a time. 

Geralt readies his sword, calls his magic up to the surface of his skin. If he’s going to die, he’s going to die taking out as many corpse-eaters as he can.

But then a sob. His name, whispered through trembling lips. He looks up at Jaskier, sitting wide-eyed and frightened in the tree. He’s finally realized that this fight isn’t going to end in Geralt’s favor. 

And if Geralt dies, he’ll be trapped.

That’s untenable. He needs another plan.

Jaskier’s in the tree, about thirty feet in the air. Geralt could try to climb, but the ghouls are way too fast. They’d rip him apart before he made it up three branches.

He thinks about the hours that him, Luka, Remus, and Eskel had spent fucking around with their new magic, after the trials. Seeing how much Quen could block, what ridiculous things someone would do under Axii, how large of a fireball Igni could make.

But they’d always had the most fun with Aard.

Geralt takes a deep breath, and drops his sword.

“Jaskier,” he yells. “Catch me!”

***

_ 1176 _

The two of them make short (albeit flashy) work of the drowners. As soon as they confirm that they’re all dead, and that neither of them are injured, Luka attempts to push Geralt into the swamp.

He fails because, as soon as Geralt sees his foot aiming to sweep his ankle, he flexes his fingers and sends Luka flying backward with a well-placed Aard. He lands on his ass in the muddy water and blinks up at the shore as though he can’t remember how he left it, as Geralt nearly collapses with laughter.

“You’re not the only one who can use signs, sunshine,” he says with a grin, offering Luka a hand. He knows, of course, that Luka is going to pull him into the swamp. He goes with the motion because it provides him the perfect opportunity to grab a handful of mud and smash it over Luka’s head.

Luka gasps with indignation and then they’re off, pushing and shoving at each other, throwing handfuls of mud that are half-heartedly blocked by Quen shields, and stirring up massive waves with Aard. 

Geralt eventually calls for a truce, laughing so hard he can’t breathe, mud covering him from head to toe. They’ll both receive quite a scolding from the masters once they get back, even with proof that they’ve killed all the drowners, but Geralt can’t bring himself to care.

Luka smiles at him and, even covered in mud and blood and gods know what else, Geralt doesn’t think he’s ever seen a more beautiful person in his life.

***

_ 1245 _

Jaskier doesn't even question Geralt. He just sits down on his branch, tangling his legs together and bracing his back against the trunk, and opens up his arms. Geralt sprints towards the tree, getting as close as he can before the ghouls pounce. Then he points his hand at the ground, at a slight angle so that he won’t slam into the branches below Jaskier, forms his fingers into the shape for Aard, and lets himself  _ fly. _

__ He and the other wolves had spent hours perfecting this technique, climbing up into the trees and catching each other as they Aarded themselves off the ground. He can only hope that Jaskier won’t flinch. If he misses the catch, or if Geralt can’t catch  _ himself  _ on a branch, the ghouls will be waiting below.

He tumbles through the air, arms and legs flailing, eyes zeroed in on Jaskier’s panicked face. He’ll wind up a bit below him, perfect. Geralt throws out his hand at the top of his arc, finds Jaskier’s elbow, and holds on tight. He swings forward, forward, and Jaskier is swearing, and there’s another hand grabbing the back of his shirt, and his foot meets the trunk with a mighty  _ crack. _

Oh. That’s why they stopped Aarding themselves into trees. Right.

Geralt bites down a scream of pain as his ankle shatters, and he curses whichever dumb thirteen year old thought up this idea in the first place. It was probably Eskel.  _ Fuck. _

“Geralt?” Jaskier asks, his voice shaking. “Geralt, you alright?”

“Fine,” he huffs, squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m fine.”

“Well that’s great because...well I don’t want to alarm you but we’re in a tree and the ghouls are still on the ground.”

Geralt sighs. Right. Time to clean up the mess.

“Jaskier,” he says. “That was Aard. Got that? Lots of things rhyme with it, I’m sure. Now, let me show you Igni.” 

***

_ 1176 _

“We could do this forever, you know.”

Geralt pulls his towel away from his head and blinks at Luka in confusion. Luka is sitting on his bed, towel draped over his shoulders, leaving his long curls to air dry. 

“What? Wash mud out of our hair after you start a fight?”

Luka snorts.

“You were the first to bring mud into it,” he says. “But no. Just—we fight really well together, don’t we? We...we know each other. I—I want to keep fighting at your side. When we leave here, I mean.”

Geralt’s heart is fluttering like a human’s in his chest, and even the knowledge that Luka can hear it isn’t enough to embarrass him. He feels like he’s flying, like he’s dancing on a cloud.

“You...want to stay with me? On the Path?”

Luka ducks his head. His cheeks are burning red. Is he nervous for the same reason that Geralt is nervous?

“If you want,” he says.

“I—” Geralt swallows. He knows he should tell Luka about his love, if he’s offering something as big as sharing the Path with him. That’s practically marriage—rarely done between anyone but spouses, and while it’s possible with close friends, it doesn’t feel...right, to keep his feelings to himself. To pretend he only sees Luka as a best friend, when they’re doing something this important together.

“I love you,” he says. The words hang in the air between them. “And...yes, I want to share the Path with you, but I wanted you to know, I—”

Before he can finish his sentence, Luka climbs off the bed, walks over to him, and takes his hand. Tears are shining in his eyes.

“You love me?” he asks. Geralt nods.

Luka laughs, bright and delighted, and presses his lips against Geralt’s. Geralt stands still for a moment, frozen with disbelief that Luka is actually  _ kissing  _ him, before he closes his eyes and melts into the touch.

Luka is kissing him. Luka—

“I love you too,” he whispers against Geralt’s lips.

—Luka feels the same way.

They pull apart, and there’s that same mischievous gleam in Luka’s eye that he got when he stole a basketful of sandwiches so they wouldn’t go hungry, when he hid a handful of spiders in the bed of an instructor that shouted at Geralt, when he offered Geralt a crown of daisies.

“Why don’t you say we go to our meadow?” he says, tugging Geralt towards the door. Geralt goes with a grin.

***

_ 1245 _

After they’ve set all the ghouls on fire (and miraculously avoided doing the same to the forest, Geralt really thinks he should be congratulated for that) and Geralt half-climbs, half-falls out of the tree to the tune of Jaskier’s nervous clucking, Geralt sits on the slightly singed ground, and stares at his shattered ankle.

_ A slow witcher is a dead witcher a slow witcher is a dead witcher a slow witcher is lying on his bed with a broken leg and— _

“Oh dear, that looks bad.”

It’s his own leg that’s broken. Geralt takes a deep, shaky breath. It’s his own leg that’s broken, and he’s in the woods, not in Kaer Morhen. The humans aren’t coming for him.

He’s not about to be murdered.

_ Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. _

“Fortunately for you, I’ve been taking some extra classes in Oxenfurt,” Jaskier says. He puts his hand on Geralt’s shoulder, keeping a constant pressure there even as he starts fumbling at Geralt’s bootlaces. His thumb starts moving in slow circles over Geralt’s skin, and Geralt wonders just how visible his panic is.

He’s surprised to find he’s not that ashamed of it.

That the idea of Jaskier knowing he’s scared doesn’t scare him more.

“Most of them with the medical students,” he says. “You won’t  _ believe  _ what’s in a human body Geralt, it’s honestly disgusting.”

“I can. Believe it.”

“Have you seen a stomach in a jar though?” Jaskier says, yanking Geralt’s boot off.

“Can’t say I have,” Geralt admits, his lips twitching a bit despite the situation. 

“Well I have and it’s…disgustingly poetic. Yeah, that’s turning an interesting shade of blue, definitely broken.”

Geralt sighs and tilts his head back, looking up at the stars and biting his lips. He doesn’t need to cry. It’s just a broken ankle. A broken ankle is not a death sentence.

_ Except when it is, except when it’s propped up on a bloodstained pillow, except when humans get tired of witchers, except, except, except. _

“Hey,” Jaskier says. “It’s gonna be okay. We’re right near a big city, there’s bound to be a healer there who can fix you up.”

Geralt nods. He knows there will be. But he also knows that even the best healer can’t fix things instantaneously. Even with all the salves and spells in the world, his body still needs time to recover. He’ll likely be on bedrest for two weeks, maybe more, time that he can’t fight back, that he’s helpless, an easy target, a—

“What’s wrong?” Jaskier asks. He stops fiddling with Geralt’s ankle to look him in the face, eyes full of concern. “Seriously, you’re gonna be okay. This isn’t a career ending injury by any means, you’ll be up and witchering in a month, tops.”

“But that’s a month that I can’t fight,” Geralt says. His voice cracks halfway through the sentence. “That’s a month that I’m—”

He turns away, taking a deep breath.

“Is this about coin?” Jaskier asks. “Because I can...Geralt you’ve shot my career to heights I never could have dreamed of, the least I can do is put you up at an inn for a while.”

“It’s not that, it’s—people don’t like witchers,” he says. Generically. He can talk about this generically. “And if we’re injured, if we’re easy marks, they can…”

He trails off, refusing to look at Jaskier. Refusing to see what look might be on his face right now. Pity? Disgust, that a witcher was scared of a bunch of weak humans?

“Gods,” Jaskier whispers. “Has that...happened often? That humans—humans kill—”

“It’s happened before,” Geralt says, crossing his arms over his chest. 

“Okay. Alright. I’m staying with you then.”

“What?”

He snaps his head back. Jaskier’s eyes are flashing with determination. His jaw is clenched so tight Geralt is surprised his teeth don’t shatter in his mouth.

“I’m staying with you,” he says. “And I know I don’t look like much, but I swear on my life that I’ll protect you, Geralt. Okay?”

“But—the competition in Cidaris—”

“Who the fuck cares?” Jaskier says, as though he hadn’t gone on for  _ hours  _ about the Cidaris Bardic Competition, how much of a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity it is.

And here he is, throwing all that away so he can stay with his scared, paranoid... _ friend.  _ Jaskier is staying with Geralt because Geralt is his friend. Because he cares about him, as he has insisted time and time again.

“Thank you,” Geralt whispers.

“Anytime,” Jaskier says. “I mean it. I’m not letting you out of my  _ sight  _ when you’re injured, not after hearing that. Now come on. Let’s get that ankle splinted.”

***

_ 1186 _

Eskel and Lambert wake them up at the crack of dawn and shoo Geralt out of the room. Well, Eskel shoos, Lambert  _ shoves,  _ a bit too hard. The lad’s still getting used to his newfound strength, it seems. Or he’s just using that as an excuse.

“Looks like I’m being abducted,” Geralt laughs.

“You’re not,” Eskel informs him. “ _ He  _ is.”

He nods at Luka, who is still rubbing sleep out of his eyes, his hair a wild cloud around his face.

“Why?”

“It’s bad luck for you to see him in his wedding clothes before the wedding,” Lambert informs him seriously. “And we’re gonna help him get ready.”

“Help him and not me?” Geralt asks, raising an eyebrow. “Playing favorites I see.”

Eskel laughs and rakes his fingers through Geralt’s short, shiny hair.

“You don’t need any help,” he says. Fair enough.

“Have fun then,” Geralt says as Lambert herds him towards the door, and Luka groans, flopping back down on the bed.

“We’ll send for you when they can’t figure it out,” he says.

“We  _ will not,”  _ protests Lambert.

They do.

It’s about three hours later, and Geralt and Vesemir are working side by side in the stables, mucking out the stalls and feeding the horses. Vesemir keeps smiling at Geralt when he thinks Geralt can’t see him, pride and relief mingling in his eyes. It makes Geralt’s chest wiggle with warmth, the idea that he’s made his father proud of him. Proud of  _ them. _

And then Eskel shows up, eyes wide and frantic.

“…you need my help,” Geralt says. It’s not a question.

“Yes,” Eskel answers anyway. “I have no idea how to—his hair looks so neat every day, I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”

“It looks neat because I know how to do it,” Geralt says with a roll of his eyes. Vesemir hides a laugh behind one of the horses.

“Go on,” he chuckles, waving Geralt away. “I’ve got this. Go fix him up.”

When they reach their bedroom, Luka is sitting on a low stool, arms crossed over his chest and clearly struggling to hold back laughter. Lambert is desperately trying to yank a brush through his still-dry hair and—yeah those are the first and second problems.

“You couldn’t have offered them a bit of advice?” Geralt laughs, plucking the brush out of Lambert’s hand.

“I wanted to see if they could figure it out,” Luka snorts. His hair is even more disastrous than it had been when he’d woken up that morning, a mass of frizz and tangles with a few braids clinging on for dear life as they slowly came apart.

“Well they couldn’t,” Geralt says.

“They couldn’t,” Luka agrees. He puts his hand against his forehead, feigning a swoon. “And now you must rescue my hair, and therefore see me in my wedding attire, and therefore our love is doomed to end in tragedy and heartbreak.”

Geralt snorts, offering his hand to Luka and hauling him up off the stool.

“What a woeful tale,” he agrees. “All because you never learned how to do your own damn hair.”

“They’ll sing about it for years,” Luka agrees somberly. “It’ll bring a tear to every maiden’s eye.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Lambert grouses. “But don’t come crying to me when Geralt trips and falls into the bonfire tonight. Lady Luck is not a forgiving mistress.”

Geralt shakes his head and pulls Luka over to the washbasin.

“You’re the one whose gonna fall into the bonfire,” he tells Lambert as he heats the water with Igni. “Cause you sneak white gull when you know you can’t handle it.”

“What—I do  _ no  _ such thing! And even if I did, I totally  _ could  _ handle it, thank you very much.”

Eskel snorts, wrapping an arm around Lambert’s shoulders and tugging him out of the room.

“C’mon puppy,” he laughs. “Let’s leave them to it.”

“But the  _ tradition—”  _ Lambert whines, but Eskel already has him out through the door.

Geralt has Luka sit down against the washbasin.

“Tilt your head back,” he murmurs, picking up a cup. Luka obliges, letting the end of his hair dangle into the warm water. Geralt dips the cup in the basin and pours it over the crown of his head, then does it again and again, soaking his hair thoroughly with water.

“I like seeing Lambert like this,” Luka says, eyes closed.

“What, destroying your hair?”

He picks up a bottle of the special oil Luka uses, the kind that smells like orange blossoms and summer, and works it through the tangles.

“No,” Luka snorts. “Happy. Excited for something.”

“He’s come a long way,” Geralt agrees. “You’ve brought him a long way.”

Luka hums, relaxing under Geralt’s touch. Geralt runs his hands through Luka’s hair a few more times, just to hear him purr, and then he wraps a towel over his shoulders and helps him sit back up, hair dripping down his back. He scrunches out some of the excess water, then uses another towel to pat gently over the curls.

“Are you worried at all?” he asks, separating the hair into sections.

“About what?”

“About what Lambert said. You know, bad luck, and all that.”

Luka opens his eyes.

“Are you actually scared of that silly old superstition?” he laughs, but there’s warmth in his gaze, his smile, his voice. He might be teasing Geralt, but it’s lighthearted. Gentle.

“No.  _ Yes.  _ I just—I want this to be perfect. Our wedding, our marriage, all of it. I don’t want to mess it up.”

Luka reaches out and catches Geralt’s cheek in his hand. His fingers are warm, calloused, familiar. Geralt brings a hand up and rests it over Luka’s, pressing his palm closer into Geralt’s skin.

“It won’t be perfect,” Luka says. “And you will mess up. So will I. That’s life, I mean—we’ve both messed up plenty of times.”

He leans forward, resting his damp forehead against Geralt’s.

“But we won’t mess  _ it  _ up. You wanna know how I know that?”

“Yeah.”

“Because I know you.” His free hand taps against Geralt’s chest. “And I know myself. And the two of us together—the world can’t throw a single thing at us that we won’t be able to overcome.”

Geralt is hit with a surge of love as sudden and intense as a tidal wave, an all-consuming blast of warmth and strength that he thinks might bowl him over. Might destroy him. Or let him fly.

“I love you,” he whispers.

Luka grins and catches Geralt’s lips in a gentle kiss.

“I love you too,” he says when he pulls back. “And that’s how I know we’ll be amazing.”

***

_ 1250 _

The night is calm and warm and shockingly bright, the moon hanging over their heads like a great yellow eye. The field that they’ve chosen to make camp in is coming alive with the sound of crickets, and Geralt can hear frogs singing by the creek that divides the grass from the nearby trees.

Jaskier makes a small, delighted sound as he settles down by their fire, his lute balanced in his lap.

“Nights like this are rare indeed, outside of fairytales,” he says, picking his fingers over the strings.

“They are,” Geralt agrees.

“No swamps, no mosquitos, temperature just right, no monsters—”

“Don’t push your luck,” Geralt says, smirking a bit at Jaskier’s squawk of protest.

“Oh come now, Geralt, don’t tell me you believe in  _ luck.  _ Or  _ jinxing yourself.” _

“Don’t you?” Bards were superstitious types as a rule, and Geralt was frankly surprised that Jaskier didn’t have a dozen little rituals for each performance. To not believe in luck at all—

_ Luka, laughing away Geralt’s nervousness as they prepared for their wedding, rolling his eyes at superstitious villagers, snorting at Geralt whenever he claimed Law of Surprise instead of asking for coin.  _

—it’s dangerous, Geralt thinks. Luck isn’t kind to people who don’t bow to her.

“I don’t like to,” Jaskier says with a shrug. “Everyone back at Oxenfurt always had their own thing that they did before competitions. Wearing a certain pair of socks, spinning in circles and chanting, drinking two glasses of honey wine—though that might have just been to steady their nerves, to be fair. Either way, when they won they credited their luck, when they lost, they credited their rival’s. And I didn’t want that. I wanted my victories to be mine.”

“And your defeats?” 

“All the more so.”

He moves his fingers and strums down on the lute, producing a horrible shriek of sound that has Geralt’s fingers twitching towards his ears.

“It might be easy to blame that chord on luck. But if I cursed the position of the stars, if I failed to acknowledge that my fingers were at fault, I would never be able to make it better. I would never be able to do this.”

He moves his fingers again, and this time the chord is clear, beautiful, a little bit mournful.

“Luck didn’t give me that chord,” he says. “Luck didn’t give me  _ Toss a Coin,  _ luck didn’t get me crowned the best bard at Oxenfurt two years in a row. I did. My time and tears and bloody fingers did.”

“Bloody fingers?”

“Try and learn a string instrument and you’ll understand,” Jaskier laughs. “These callouses didn’t come easy, you know.”

“Hmm. Like sword fighting.”

“Huh, yeah. Guess so. We have more in common than you think.”

There’s a pause. Not a silent one, as Jaskier has taken the opportunity to start plucking out some complex arpeggios on the lute, but a comfortable one all the same. Geralt tilts his head back and looks at the stars and thinks about luck. About blame, and responsibility, and doing better.

About a flaunted tradition and bloody bed sheets.

Logically, he knows that seeing Luka before their wedding wasn’t the thing that led to his death. And yet it’s easier, like Jaskier said, to blame it on disgruntled fate. Because if he doesn’t, he has to think about fault.

And unlike Jaskier’s chord—

“What if it’s something you can’t ever improve?” he murmurs quietly.

“Huh?” The music stops.

“What if you mess up, and something goes wrong, and you can’t ever—”

_ His stomach cramping and twisting and burning. Luka laughing him off as he props up his injured leg on a pile of pillows. Renfri choking on her own blood in his arms. _

“—you can’t ever fix it?” Jaskier finishes gently. Geralt nods, not taking his eyes off the stars.

Jaskier sighs. A few disconnected notes fill the air as he plucks aimlessly at his lute.

“I suppose all you can do is acknowledge your own part in it. And acknowledge other people’s parts in it too—cause I  _ know  _ whatever you’re blaming yourself for probably isn’t wholly your fault.”

“How can you know that?” Geralt says, and it comes out a bit angrier than he had intended. A bit more wounded.

_ If he’d just taken better care of himself, if he’d just insisted on staying in Kaer Morhen, if he’d just killed Stregobor when he had the chance, if, if, if— _

“Because you’re you,” Jaskier says, undeterred. “And I know you. I know you always blame yourself for anything you have even the slightest, most tangential role in. I know you always try to shoulder all the fault. And it’s admirable to some extent. It’s admirable that you admit when you fuck up. But Geralt—blaming everything on yourself means that you can’t see where you actually went wrong. Can’t see what you can  _ actually  _ fix. It’s as foolish as blaming everything on luck.”

“You think I’m a fool?”

“I know you’re a fool.”

He smiles at Geralt, soft and sad.

“Hmm. So what can I actually fix, then?”

Jaskier sighs, and scoots over so he’s sitting right next to Geralt. He leans into him, a warm weight against his side. Geralt closes his eyes and breathes. Something unfurls in his chest, part of himself reaching out towards the contact like a flower towards the sun.

“Depends on whatever it is you’re blaming yourself for,” he says, and there’s a question there, lingering, placed between them like a golden coin. Ready to be grabbed.

And he almost takes it. For the first time, he thinks he might want to tell Jaskier about the most wounded parts of himself.

Instead, he talks about Renfri.

***

_ 1186 _

Geralt’s heart starts racing as soon as the sun dips below the horizon. Eskel grins at the look on Geralt’s face.

“You’re eager,” he laughs.

“You would be too, if you were marrying Luka,” Geralt says, not even trying to deny it.

“No I wouldn’t. I’d be fearing for my life,” Eskel snorts. “Looking over my shoulder, just waiting for you to strike me down.”

“Very funny.”

“Glad you find the idea of my death amusing.”

Geralt smiles, looking out the window as the sky blooms with brilliant orange fire.

“I’m proud of you both though,” Eskel says, leaning into Geralt’s side. “Really. You’ve both come so fucking far.”

“We all have.”

“Yeah, but this is your day, so shut up and let me compliment you and your husband.”

The word sings through his chest, shivering and warm. His husband. Luka was about to become his  _ husband. _

“Not married yet,” he says. “Don’t jinx it, or I’ll fuck up a step and fall in the fire.”

“You’ve been practicing for weeks,” Eskel says, rolling his eyes and grabbing Geralt’s arm. “This is gonna be the most graceful wedding dance Kaer Morhen has ever seen and you know it.”

He pulls him towards the door and Geralt follows without a word of protest. With each step he feels lighter and lighter.  _ Husband. Husband. Husband.  _ He’s getting married to his best friend, his person, the love of his life.

He doesn’t stop smiling all the way down to the woods.

Kaer Morhen has held all its most important ceremonies in the same forest clearing for hundreds of years. Countless namings, weddings, last rites. Geralt has attended dozens of these ceremonies, clapping and stomping for other witchers’ weddings, weeping for lost friends, cheering when newly made witchers took their new names for the Path.

It’s a place that feels like it was made for ceremony, especially in the early summer heat. All tall ancient trees and moss-covered rocks and fireflies, buzzing across the clearing in lazy loops. The warm orange of the sunset is rapidly fading, bleeding into lilac dusk.

The keep’s inhabitants have already gathered around the edges of the clearing, chatting and laughing. Remus notices Geralt and Eskel lurking in the woods, sends them a small smile and a little wave. Geralt waves back. They might not be as close as they were as children, but Remus is still pack. Always will be. On the other side of the clearing, Lambert is challenging one of the other kids to a wrestling match. Geralt shakes his head with a fond smile. 

“The puppy can’t be still for a moment,” he says. Eskel rolls his eyes next to him.

“You’re so indulgent”

“It’s my wedding, I’m allowed to be.”

Eskel groans.

“How long are you gonna use that excuse for?” He pitches his voice low, into a mocking approximation of Geralt’s. “Well  _ I  _ got married this decade so I’m  _ allowed  _ to be a total sap.”

“As long as you keep using the excuse that your back hurts from that wyvern you fought three years ago.”

“ _ Hey— _ !”

Geralt is distracted from Eskel’s sputtering indignation by a slight movement on the other side of the clearing, two more figures slipping to the edge of the tree line. His breath catches in his throat. Bathed in firelight like this, cloaked in white and draped in flowers, a wide smile spreading across his face, Luka looks —he looks like something magical. Something beautiful and strange, something precious and warm and special.

He looks like the sun.

Eskel sighs.

“Come on, loverboy,” he says, but there is pride in his voice, and relief, and joy. “Let’s get you hitched.”

Vesemir is beaming from his spot by the fire, the silver threads of his shirt glinting in the soft glow of the dying flames. A cheer begins where Eskel leads Geralt from the trees, quickly growing into a roar of approval as Geralt and Luka walk among their fellow wolves. The cheer is loudest from the youngest wolves, the trainees and fresh-on-the-Path witchers, tapering off into a polite clapping from the oldest masters.

Luka looks even more beautiful up close, the firelight playing off his face and hair, wreathing him in golden warmth. He leans forward on his toes, like he wants to brush past Vesemir and pull Geralt into a kiss, but he holds himself back. So does Geralt, but just barely. Vesemir shoots him a warning look that quickly softens into a proud smile.

“Eskel,” Vesemir says, nodding his head. The cheer fades into a low murmur of excitement, a rustling of bodies eager to throw themselves into motion. The ceremony has begun.

Geralt’s heart has never raced so fast, not even when he was human.

“You are Geralt’s chosen companion on this day,” he says.

“I am.”

“Can you speak to the love that has brought him here? Can you swear that it is honest and true?”

“I can.”

“Then you may bind his hand.”

Vesemir hands Eskel one half of the handfasting cloth, a piece of bright red silk that has bound hundreds of witchers before them, and will bind hundreds more after. Their love is only one small piece in the tapestry of Kaer Morhen. The ribbon feels cool against his palm as Eskel winds it around Geralt’s hand, and surprisingly heavy. Like he’s holding the weight of all the hands that have come before.

“It is done,” Eskel says, squeezing Geralt’s hand one last time.

“Then you may join the wolves.”

Eskel grins and lets go, stepping back to join the thrumming crowd. 

“Coën,” Vesemir continues, now turning to Luka’s companion—a griffin witcher that the two of them had befriended on the Path, when they were fresh out of Kaer Morhen. 

“You are Luka’s chosen companion on this day.”

“I am.”

“Can you speak to the love that has brought him here? Can you swear that it is honest and true?”

There’s a sadness in Coën’s eyes when he looks at them, and Geralt knows that some part of him is seeing the people they were when they first met him—young and scared and trembling in the face of the world.

He feels so far removed from that person now, standing in the firelight. Like a snake shedding its skin, a bird growing its flight feathers, a moth emerging from its cocoon, he has made himself into something more.

“I can,” Coën says. 

“Then you may bind his hand.”

Coën wraps the cloth over Luka’s hand, quick and neat, leaving a long tail at the end.

“It is done.”

“Then, griffin, you may stand among our pack tonight.”

Coën slips away, and Geralt doesn’t turn his head to see where he chooses to stand. He doesn’t think he can look away from Luka, now or for the rest of his life. He feels bespelled, almost. Entranced. 

“You have come before me, before the fire, before us all, because you have chosen to follow your Paths together,” Vesemir says, and the words are as old and familiar as a well-worn lullaby. “And this togetherness will bring you strength, this is undoubtable. It will bring you wisdom, and courage, and warmth. It will help you face challenges that you could not weather alone. Is this what you desire?”

“It is,” Luka says, lifting the free end of the cloth and handing it to Vesemir.

“It is,” Geralt says, handing his over as well.

“Then you must know that this union will not only give,” Vesemir continues. “It will also take. It will take as much strength as it gives, as much wisdom, as much courage, as much warmth. It will take all that you offer it. And in turn, you will face challenges that you would not, alone. Is this, too, what you desire?”

“It is,” Luka says, his smile growing so wide Geralt is half-concerned his cheeks will split.

“It is.”

“Courage, wisdom, warmth,  _ strength.  _ The gods know you boys have that in abundance.”

This is not part of the ritual. Geralt has been to enough weddings to know the vows by heart, and these words have never been spoken before. A quiet murmur rustles through the crowd. They all know Geralt and Luka’s story. They all know what they’ve been through, over the years.

They all know how shocking it is that the two of them are able to stand here at all.

“Fuck yeah they do!” hollers Lambert from the crowd, and the almost-mournful tension in the air cracks in half. Laughter ripples across the clearing, and Vesemir shakes his head with a watery grin.

“And with that ringing endorsement,” he says, tying the two ends of the cloth together. “You may join the dance.”

Geralt takes Luka’s hand, and the witchers around them start up the beat.

Every wolf in Kaer Morhen knows this song, from the littlest trainees to the oldest masters. It has played in this clearing ever since this clearing existed, made only of the bodies and voices of the pack, supporting the love of those within it. The dance, too, is ancient, the steps the same for each witcher who marries at this fire.

He dreamed, as a child, of dancing around this fire. Of dancing with  _ Luka  _ around this fire. And here they are.

Luka grins at him, so wide that Geralt is half-worried his skin will burst, and swings Geralt around the fire.

The majority of the dance takes place with the campfire at the center, the warmth of a home that can easily turn dangerous. A sign of trust, of skill, of protectiveness, to keep one’s partner safe from the flames. They spin around it in time to the beat, their feet landing perfectly on every step. 

And though their fellow wolves are a thunderstorm of noise around them, supporting them, keeping time for them, they all seem to fade away. All he can see is Luka, face glowing in the firelight, eyes brimming with happiness. His sunshine. His  _ husband. _

Luka grins at him and pulls his hand away as far as the handfasting cloth will allow.

Time for the last step in the dance. Luka shifts his weight and leaps over the fire.

Geralt had worried about this for weeks. Worried that he wouldn’t be able to catch him, that his feet would drag over the coals, that the cloth would burst into flames between them. Anything and everything going wrong.

But it’s difficult to believe that any of those mistakes are possible now, as he opens up his arms and catches Luka, easy as breathing.

The crowd erupts into cheers around them but Geralt doesn’t take his eyes off of Luka.

“We’re married,” Luka laughs, and Geralt doesn’t think there’s a single person in the world, living or dead, as lucky as him. None of them will ever get the chance to see Luka like this, after all. Smiling and loving and cradled in Geralt’s arms, so very  _ beautiful. _

“We’re married,” Geralt agrees, and leans down to kiss his husband.

Thank you again thewonderfulthingaboutfish for your amazing [art!](https://thewonderfulthingaboutfish.tumblr.com/post/623187172414144512/every-wolf-in-kaer-morhen-knows-this-song-from) (Seriously go check out [their tumblr,](https://thewonderfulthingaboutfish.tumblr.com) they're awesome)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to the wonderful MaliciousVegetarian for betaing and the fantabulous thewonderfulthingaboutfish for the amazing art. Go toss them a reblog over on [tumblr!](https://thewonderfulthingaboutfish.tumblr.com/post/623385391919185920/thewonderfulthingaboutfish-every-wolf-in-kaer)
> 
> Lots of discussion of dead bodies in this chapter, be warned. Very vague mention of suicidal thoughts during the section that begins "their meadow is peaceful and sunlit as ever." Also a five second fade-to-black sex scene, so if you don't wanna read that, skip ahead to the next clump of asterisks when Geralt starts climbing on top of Luka.

_ 1256 _

Geralt doesn’t like to dwell on his child surprise.

If he lets his thoughts linger on her for more than a few minutes, anxiety starts blooming through his guts and burning through his brain, making his heart race and palms sweat. And despite his constant reminders to himself that  _ she’s fine, she was born healthy, Mousesack said she was born healthy,  _ he can’t help but feel as though he’s doomed the girl by tying their fates together. That, the more he thinks of her, the more likely she is to perish. To be cut down, whether he claims her or not.

Just like everyone else he’s cared about.

Just like—

He doesn’t like to dwell on it. And when he’s awake, he’s decently good at tugging his brain away from Cirilla,. He can focus on a contract, or on inventorying his supplies, or even on Jaskier’s latest ballad, when his brain gets particularly loud.

But he can’t control his brain when he sleeps.

And in his nightmares, all the thoughts he pushes away during the day come home to roost. A human, thinking her a monster because she’s the one, slitting her throat from ear to ear. Her tiny, baby laughter cut short. A bloody baby blanket gone up in smoke, carrying Cirilla’s spirit with it.

He wakes from those nightmares gasping, choking. Sobbing, sometimes. If he’s in an inn, he lights a lamp and stares at the flame until his eyes burn. If he’s outdoors, he stumbles over to Roach and hugs her until his brain stops screaming. Until the images fade enough that he can brave sleep again.

And then, one night, he has a nightmare when Jaskier is traveling with him.

He jolts upright, chest heaving, hands twitching to grab Cirilla’s shroud before it's consigned to her pyre. Blinking in the sudden darkness of the room, expanding his pupils to take in as much light as possible. Their bags, in the corner. The table. The door. The window, letting in a sliver of moonlight.

He’s not in Cintra. He’s not in Kaer Morhen. He’s in a shitty, nameless inn in a shitty, nameless town and Jaskier is mumbling and stirring beside him.

Geralt wraps his arms around himself, trying to breathe slow and calm, to keep the sobs locked away in his chest. No need to wake Jaskier just because he’s panicking, because he can’t tell dreams from reality, because his mind keeps being dragged back and forward and sideways.

A gasp escapes him and he clasps his hand over his mouth, choking down a second one. His chest stutters as his breath batters his lungs, heaves his stomach, turns his heart inside out.

Jaskier sits up.

“G’ralt?” he mumbles, voice hazy with sleep. “‘S everything ‘kay?” 

“Yeah,” Geralt says, but his voice is shaking, shaking, shaking far too much and there’s no way Jaskier’s going to buy that.

“Did you have a nightmare?” Jaskier asks, sounding much more alert. Geralt considers lying, if only for a moment. Lying back down, turning away, and insisting that he’s fine, he’s a witcher, witchers don’t get nightmares. But that only leaves a massive lie for Jaskier to catch him in. And he has too many of those already.

“Yes,” he says.

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

Jaskier is moving closer to him, his heat radiating into Geralt’s skin through layers of smallclothes and blankets. A shudder runs through him as he leans into the warmth. He barely considers Jaskier’s offer. Because talking about it means talking about Cirilla and Luka and Ar—

“No.” 

“Okay,” Jaskier says, easy as anything. He hesitates, then Geralt feels the bed shift as Jaskier lies back down, his warmth retreating slightly.

“Come here,” he murmurs, and Geralt can’t stop the sob that flies from his throat. It’s odd, that someone caring about him is the thing that makes him finally break.

He lies down and lets Jaskier drape an arm over his back and pull him close, lets Jaskier tug his head against his chest, lets Jaskier bury his fingers in the strands of his hair.

“This alright?” Jaskier asks, and Geralt nods against his chest, not trusting himself to speak.

Jaskier starts humming, something soft and a bit lonely, a bit mournful. Geralt recognizes the tune. It’s a lullaby about a baby star fallen from the sky, yearning to get back home. 

It aches, it yanks on his heart, his brain, what’s left of his soul. But he doesn’t ask Jaskier to stop. Instead, he curls closer into Jaskier’s warmth and counts the heartbeats fluttering against his cheek.

He falls asleep feeling safe.

***

_ 1230 _

“You’re an idiot,” Geralt informs Luka for the fifth time in an hour. Luka just grins foolishly at him, despite the sweat beading on his brow as Geralt binds his leg against the splints.

“You married this idiot,” he reminds Geralt. “What does that make you, exactly?”

Geralt sighs.

“Exceedingly tolerant,” he says. Luka barks out a laugh that quickly turns into a whimper as Geralt tugs the bandage tighter. Geralt frowns, pausing in his ministrations to thumb a tear away from Luka’s cheek.

“You’re doing great,” he promises him. “Just a bit longer and then you can rest, alright?”

“I’m fine,” Luka says. He knocks his forehead against Geralt’s, sighing as the pain ripples through him. Of course, he doesn’t let the moment last too long before he ruins it. “If it gets to be too much, I’ll just remember that I got this saving your wonderful ass from a rampaging werewolf.”

Geralt rolls his eyes. 

“Me and my ass had it covered,” he says, turning his attention back to Luka’s leg. It’s clearly broken, in at least two different places if Geralt’s cursory examination was accurate, and is already turning an alarming shade of purple.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, my thunder,” Luka says, letting his head thud back against the ground. “ _ Fuck,  _ that hurts.”

“Do you need more milk of the poppy?” Geralt asks. Luka shakes his head.

“Don’t wanna be too woozy,” he says. 

Geralt bites his lip but nods, carrying on with the splinting as fast as he can without being too rough. 

“Good thing we’re close to Kaer Morhen,” he says. “We can go back, rest there for a month or two while you heal up.”

The thought of spending so long within those walls makes his skin prickle and his stomach ache, but he can push aside his discomfort if it means keeping his husband safe.

“Mmhmm,” Luka mumbles, his leg twitching under Geralt’s hand. “Sounds good.”

***

Geralt’s life is better when Jaskier is with him. 

The aldermen are more likely to pay. The inns are less likely to overcharge. His injuries heal neater. He can eat as much as he needs without fear of retribution. And, most importantly, he sleeps easier. Chases away the aftershocks of nightmares in the safety of Jaskier’s arms. 

He feels—

_ Protected. _

_ Safe. _

_ Comforted. _

_ Loved. _

And that. That last word.

He thinks Jaskier might love him.

And that thought scares him more than anything, because it means he could have him, if he wanted. If he asked. He could ask Jaskier to chase away his nightmares with a kiss instead of a song. He could repay Jaskier’s gentle affection with flowers, warm boots, the little sketches of the world that Geralt hides away in his monster journal. He could whisper sweet things in Jaskier’s ear as they watch the stars together. He could make love to him.

He could have him.

And he thinks, the more the years march on, the more he indulges in Jaskier’s safety, he thinks he might just want to.

But he can’t.

He can’t, because everyone he’s ever tried to keep is dead and gone, ashes on the wind, bones beneath a meadow. The world does not let him cultivate love beyond the confines of his heart.

It’s ridiculous. He knows it’s ridiculous. Blaming destiny, fate,  _ luck.  _ Blaming anyone but himself for what he’s lost. Thinking that it’s impossible to fix, impossible to get right.

But gods above, his heart can’t take another blow.

***

“Do you really want to stay here?”

Geralt rolls over in bed, slipping Luka’s hand off of his waist and holding it between them. 

The answer is no. The answer is very much no. The answer is that they’ve been in Kaer Morhen for less than a week and Geralt’s back is already crawling with ghosts.

“Where else would I go?” he asks, pressing Luka’s hand against his lips. “You’re here.”

Luka’s other hand comes up to his face, tracing along his cheekbone and down the curve of his jaw.

“I am. But I can see how much this place is hurting you,” he murmurs. Geralt closes his eyes. He thought he’d been hiding it so well, too. But Luka’s always been too good at reading him.

“I’m sorry. It’s been—it’s been years, sunshine, I should—I can get through this for you.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

Luka pulls Geralt’s face a few inches forward and kisses him, warm and soft and not seeking anything more. Geralt melts into it.

“I love you,” Luka says when he pulls away. “And I care about you. More than anything in my life. And that means doing what I can to shelter you.”

“We’re more sheltered than we usually are,” Geralt tries to joke, but it falls flat.

“This castle isn’t a haven for you,” Luka says. He slips his hand from Geralt’s jaw, letting it trail down his throat, the curve of his shoulder, the dip of his collarbone, before resting it over Geralt’s heart. Making sure it’s still beating.

He only does this on bad days, Geralt knows.

“It isn’t for either of us,” he says. “And—it’s bad for me, you’re right. But it’s making it worse for you, isn’t it? Seeing me here.”

Luka sighs. Brings their joined hands up to his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers like a prayer. 

“Don’t be,” Geralt says. Despite everything, relief blooms through him. Relief that they’re on the same page, in this as in everything. “I feel the same way. It’s too—familiar. Us both being here. One of us hurt.”

Luka drops their hands below his chin, and his eyes skim across Geralt’s face. Hope is gathering in his eyes, the same relief reflected back.

“I’ll go out on the Path for a month,” Geralt says. He drops a kiss on Luka’s lips, letting this one linger. There’s a question in it. “And then come back and fetch you.” 

“I think—I think that would be for the best.”

The grief hangs between them for a moment. Old. Muted, but louder in this place. And then Luka laughs, snapping the tension in half.

“A whole month without you,” he says. “I don’t know how I’ll survive.” 

“Well, let’s give you something to remember me by.” 

He rolls Luka onto his back, being careful not to jostle his leg, and straddles him. Luka grins up at him, looking every bit as beautiful as he did on their wedding night. On every night and every day since.

“I can think of quite a few things I can do to you on your back,” Geralt grins. Luka’s hand teases at his waistband. Slips down the front of his pants and drags the tip of his finger between his folds. Geralt grinds down into the sensation, and Luka smirks, staring up at Geralt like he’s something wild and wonderful and utterly his.

“Well then,” he says, slipping a finger inside, grinning at the way it makes Geralt gasp. “We’d better get started.”

***

An unfortunate corollary: Life is worse when Jaskier is  _ not  _ around.

And he hasn’t been around in five months. He’s been off playing at the court of the Countess de Stael (and playing quite a bit more than his lute, if his letters are to be believed. Geralt ignores how that makes his chest burn.) and Geralt’s sleep is getting worse and worse. The nightmares grow, from a few times a week to every day, from vague, confused jumbles to terrifying clarity. The people he’s lost. The people he might yet lose, if he cannot keep his heart in check.

He’s getting maybe two hours of sleep a night, on the good nights. And he can feel himself slowing down. Getting sloppy on hunts, taking longer to finish off the monsters, acquiring more wounds along the way. 

_ A slow witcher is a dead witcher. _

He can’t go on like this. He needs some way of making the nightmares stop, some way of calming his too heavy, too hurt heart. 

And then he hears of a djinn in Rinde. A djinn with three wishes, just his for the taking.

_ You could sever your bond with Cirilla. You could bring back Luka. You could bring back— _

Normally, he wouldn’t let himself get too hopeful. Wouldn’t even let himself meddle in that kind of magic. Djinn are fickle, dark creatures when they’re sealed away, he knows this from his childhood lessons. They want nothing more than to harm their masters, to destroy the people who dare keep them prisoner, who dare use their gifts.

Wishes rarely work out in the wisher’s favor.

But Geralt is  _ so fucking tired. _

***

Three weeks after leaving Kaer Morhen and Geralt is sitting in a tavern after the completion of a successful contract. It’s strange, drinking alone. Not being able to voice the thoughts buzzing around in his head, not being able to talk through the hunt, not being able to tangle his legs together with another’s.

There’s a group of men, laughing away at the next table over, and Geralt idly listens to their conversation as he sips his ale, letting his mind wander. He needs to start making his way back home, take a few contracts along the way. He heard that they were having a ghoul problem over in— 

“Oh, oh, I have news,” one of the men declares. “You’ll be happy to hear this. They finally did something about those mutant freaks in Kaer Morhen.”

Geralt’s heart slams to a halt.

“What do you mean?” another man asks, leaning over the table with an eager gleam in his eye.

“Guess Kaedwen got sick of dealing with those monsters on its border,” the first man says, his voice dropping into a storyteller’s cadence, eager to regale his audience with his tale. Geralt can’t move. He can’t  _ breathe.  _ He’s as still as though he was carved from stone, and the world feels very far away and far too close all at once.

“But the witchers are—they fight like animals, there’s no way we could kill them.”

“Perhaps, but there’s only a few hundred in that castle of theirs.”

_ A few hundred, mostly children, a few elders, the injured, Luka, Luka, Luka— _

“The Kaedweni sent a force of five thousand men at least. Some say as many as ten thousand.”

“Well? How did it end?”

“Those freaks might fight like wolves, but they died like dogs.” The table erupts in laughter, and Geralt staggers to his feet. The bench scrapes as he moves and the laughter dies down, the eyes of the men zeroing in on him, his panicked face, his yellow eyes, the wolf’s head around his neck.

For a moment, he thinks they’re going to draw their swords. Send him to join— _ no, no, no he can’t be dead, he can’t, he can’t, he isn’t— _

But the leader just snorts, raising his ale in a mock toast.

“Run home, puppy,” he laughs.

Geralt runs.

***

He fucked up.

He fucked up  _ badly. _

He fucked up, and now Jaskier is wheezing against his shoulder, arms weakly curled around his waist as Geralt nudges Roach faster, faster, faster. He fucked up and now Jaskier is choking on his own blood, scarlet staining his shirt in a way that’s terrifyingly familiar.

And isn’t that something? Isn’t that destiny, cackling in his face? Isn’t that a mistake he can’t stop making?

Geralt didn’t even have to show his love for it to break someone, this time.

***

He pushes his horse at a breakneck pace, thundering down a seemingly endless series of roads. His heart roars in his ears, a ringing rush of blood that drowns out all other noise. He’s barely aware of the horse heaving beneath his legs, of the dust flying up around them, of the pain in his hands as they grip the reins tighter, tighter, tighter.

All he can think of is Luka’s laughter, his smile, his warm reassurance that he’d be okay,  _ go on my thunder, I’ll see you in a month. _

His broken leg. The fact that he can’t run, can’t fight properly, can’t defend himself, and Geralt had  _ left  _ him—

_ He’ll be okay, he’ll be fine, he’s the strongest witcher that ever lived, he’ll be fine, he’ll be fine, he has to be fine, gods, please, please, please, please, please— _

The hours blur together as he rides on and on, tears gathering in his eyes. He’s not sure if they’re from the dust or the wind or the panic rising in his throat. They’re not from grief. They’re  _ not,  _ because Luka  _ isn’t dead. _

***

Jaskier’s okay. 

Jaskier’s okay, miraculously, and Geralt’s heart can rest easy for one wonderful moment. Jaskier’s okay, and full of indignation as they walk away from the house he nearly died in.

And then he mentions the mage. The djinn she’s trying to control. And Geralt still has a wish. As long as it’s locked behind his lips, the djinn will be far too strong. It’ll tear the mage apart from the inside out. And Geralt can’t let that happen, not when she saved Jaskier’s life.

He runs back into the house.

He runs into the house and he can’t talk her out of it, he can’t persuade her to stop the ritual even as it cracks her spine.

“Make your wish!” she howls. “Do it! Now!”

_ What do you want? More than anything in the world? _

And he has so many wounds, but one burns more than anything.

“My husband,” he whispers. “Luka. He’s buried under a tree in Kaer Morhen. I—”

The house shakes. Yennefer screams. His attempt at crafting the perfect wish is replaced by panic.

“I want him back.” 

Yennefer laughs in a voice that’s not her own, and Geralt knows he fucked up. 

She slumps forward as the djinn flies from her, zooming off to complete Geralt’s wish, and he wants to take it back, to fix it, but he looks down at his arm and a third line has already etched itself into his skin. Wish made. 

It whirls back into the room.

Bones scatter across the floor in its wake.

_ Back. _

Not  _ alive. _

Geralt—

Geralt’s staring down at his husband’s skull.

Geralt’s staring at a thousand fragments of Luka and his heart is in his mouth and he can’t get enough air. Geralt’s world is falling apart around him, again, fucking  _ again,  _ and this time he really can’t blame anyone but himself. Can’t blame anything but his own stupid, naive—

Yennefer shouts and a weight slams into his back, shoving him forward into swirling nothingness. A portal. Behind them, he can hear the room collapsing, obliterating everything inside it. Obliterating the bones.

Geralt is barely out of the portal before he’s on his feet, clinging onto control of his heaving stomach, sprinting up the stairs. Yennefer yells behind him but he ignores her, ignores everything. His mind is a blur of gray and the world doesn’t make  _ sense. _

He emerges into a ruined room, rubble scattered everywhere, chunks of rock and wood covering the floor, the furniture. He drops to his knees at the edge of the chaos and starts shoving aside the debris. He needs to find Luka, needs to gather him, protect him, he can’t  _ leave him here.  _

The world is getting blurry. It isn’t until warmth slips down his cheeks that he realizes it’s from tears, not panic. He draws a sleeve over his eyes and keeps working. He doesn’t get to cry. Not when it’s  _ his fucking fault. _

There’s the low hum of conversation behind him. And then a presence at his side. Geralt doesn’t turn to see who it is. He can’t stop looking.

“Yennefer told me what happened. A bit of it, at least. I’ll help you search,” Jaskier whispers. 

Those are the only words that are spoken for the entire day. By the time night falls, they’ve gathered thirteen bones and half of a cracked skull.

The rest of Luka is dust, hanging in the air around them.

***

Halfway up the mountain, the smell of death hits him, so hard and fast and vile that he gags at the taste of it. It’s rotting fruit and meat and iron, piss and shit and the unique bitterness of tears. He grits his teeth and keeps riding. It smells like a battlefield, like a massacre, like an entire castle’s worth of people slaughtered for nothing.

It gets worse the higher he climbs, building in his throat like a scream. By the time he rounds the last bend in the road, it envelops everything, all consuming. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to burn it out of his nose, scrub it from his skin.

The fighting is long since over.

But it isn’t silent. The air is full with after-battle noises—sobs, moans of pain, the incessant whir of insect wings as flies come down to feast. There are a few witchers left standing, staggering among the bodies like risen corpses. Carrying away the injured who might yet live, putting a sword through those that would not.

They turn their heads towards Geralt as he approaches, an exhausted wariness in their eyes, but once they recognize that he’s one of their own, they turn their attention back to their work. Geralt rides right up to the gate, then swings himself off of his horse and stumbles the last few steps. His legs are dead from hours of hard riding, but he doesn’t stop to let them come back to life. He can’t, he has to see, he has to know—

Vesemir is in front of him, putting his hand on his shoulder, saying something that Geralt can’t hear over the ringing in his ears. He shoves past him, because he has to get to Luka, he doesn’t have time for talking, surely Vesemir must know that?

His legs move without his mind’s input, down the grand entry hall—and it’s spattered with blood, and the moans of the dying are so very loud, but he barely takes in any of it. His focus is narrowed down to a thin patch of ground right in front of him, to the shallow gasps of his own breath, to  _ Luka, Luka, Luka, sunshine, have to find him. _

He takes the stairs two at a time, and the world is spinning around him with panic, and he’s worried he might pass out, he can’t pass out, he—

He makes it to their bedroom.

And—

The smell of blood is everywhere but it’s stronger here and—

The bedsheets are spattered with scarlet and—

Luka’s head is turned towards him and there’s a second mouth, bright red and gaping, across his throat and—

There’s blood in his hair and on his face and—

His eyes are  _ empty. _

“No,” Geralt chokes, and his voice doesn’t sound like his own. “No, no,  _ no, sunshine, no, please.” _

He falls to his knees next to the bed— _ when had he walked over to the bed?— _ and reaches for Luka with trembling fingers.

“Please.  _ Please, don’t,  _ please—please wake up, sunshine, just wake up, just—you promised we’d— _ please—” _

Luka doesn’t answer. He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t answer, he  _ keeps not answering,  _ and Geralt will never hear his voice again, he’ll never, he’ll never—

“Please,” he sobs again, as his hands flutter over Luka’s face, hair, torso.  _ “Please.” _

But the sun is gone.

***

Jaskier is worried about him.

He’s all tapping fingers and sidelong glances, opening and closing his mouth again and again. Like he wants to start this conversation but isn’t quite sure how. And Geralt gets it. He’d be concerned too, if he found Jaskier frantically digging through rubble and pulling out bones and—

It hurts to think about.

For years now, Luka’s death has been a scabbed-over wound. Covered up with cracked blood, always present,  _ always  _ there, but relatively painless unless he pulled at it the wrong way. Like the scar over his stomach, or the mark Renfri’s knife had dug into his thigh.

But sitting here, staring into a campfire in a clearing that looks  _ too fucking much  _ like the place they’d been married, with Luka’s bones stowed away in Roach’s saddlebags…it feels like someone has taken a knife and cut away the scab, letting him bleed fresh and new. He’s been flayed alive, heart laid bare for everyone to see, to study, to wonderingly remark that witchers really  _ do  _ feel, now isn’t that something?

But that’s not fair, is it? Because only Jaskier is here. And Jaskier has always known that he feels. Has never once doubted otherwise.

Jaskier finishes unpacking some of his rations and joins Geralt at the fire. He balances carefully at the edge of a log. It can’t be as comfortable as sitting at the center, but it leaves a space next to him. A space that Geralt could fill.

But he doesn’t have to. Jaskier’s letting him make that choice. Letting him decide if he wants the warmth of Jaskier’s side against his, or if he needs to be alone, if he needs the space to breathe. His heart clenches in his chest, warm and aching, and he feels—he feels known. Cared about. Protected.

He gets to his feet and steps around the fire, waiting for Jaskier to say something. He doesn’t, even as Geralt joins him on the log. He doesn’t move either, letting Geralt tilt the last few inches to lean against his side. Only then does he bring his arm up, wrapping it around Geralt’s shoulders and tugging him closer.

Geralt closes his eyes and focuses on Jaskier’s breath, gentle and steady. He does not think of how easy it would be for that breath to stop. How it very nearly did, because of Geralt’s carelessness.

They sit like that for a long time, just breathing together, letting the warmth of the fire sink into their bones. Geralt doesn’t realize he was shivering until he stops. Jaskier traces small circles over his shoulder, a constant, grounding pressure that lets some of the tension out of his spine, little by little.

By the time Geralt opens his eyes, the fire is low, small flames dancing over ruby-bright embers. The perfect height for a wedding fire.

He draws his hand over his face. He doesn’t force the memories out of his head. He shouldn’t even try. That way just ends in more pain, he learned that after the sacking. Instead, he lets them flow over him, remembers the brightness in Luka’s eyes, the surety of his steps, their fellow wolves singing and stomping around them. He remembers the happiness, bright and burning in his stomach.

Luka is gone. His eyes and hair and flashing grin, all gone. All that is left of him is a pile of bones, the medallion around Geralt’s neck, and memories shared by far too few people.

And maybe—maybe some of those memories deserve to be made into words.

“Can I tell you something?” he asks.

“Of course,” Jaskier says.

***

Lambert screams when he finds them.

Geralt watches him from his spot on the floor.  _ When did he—and what—and—  _ He looks like he’s standing behind a wall of clouded glass, sounds like he’s trying to speak around a mouthful of cotton. Or maybe the glass is in front of Geralt’s eyes, maybe the cotton is stuffed into his ears, he can’t—he can’t—he doesn’t understand—

But Lambert is howling, long and pained, and he’s trying to take something out of Geralt’s arms, a weight he can’t give up, he can’t let go of, he  _ can’t— _

“Let go!” he screams, and he doesn’t sound human. He kicks out, tightens his grip on the weight in his arms. Lambert’s face is closer to him now, close enough that he can see the tears streaming down his cheeks. But there’s rage in his eyes, too, the same rage that he’s lived with since he was a child.

And his fingers are digging into Geralt’s wrists, prying back his grip, clawing at his arms, and he’s snarling and spitting and Geralt can do nothing but hold on tighter.

“You were supposed to keep him  _ safe!"  _ Lambert howls.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know, I know, I know I was, I—”

“Gods, Lambert,  _ stop!” _

Eskel’s voice is an anchor in the storm, cutting through the noise whirling around him. Lambert’s fingers are yanked away from Geralt’s arms, leaving stinging lines in their wake. He can hear Lambert cursing wildly, can hear Eskel’s voice rolling over his protests like a river over rough stones. But his focus has returned to the weight in his arms.

To Luka.

To the blood covering both of them.

He leans down and presses his forehead against Luka’s, eyes squeezed tight like that can get rid of the cloying smell of blood. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. To Luka, to Lambert, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to  _ live  _ with this.

***

“It’s about the bones,” Geralt starts. He swallows.  _ The bones.  _ That’s all Luka is, a pile of dirty, featureless fragments.

“They were—I tried—they belong to someone I wanted to bring back. With a wish, I mean.”

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier murmurs. He rests his head on Geralt’s shoulder. His fingers don’t pause in their circling. “That it didn’t work.”

“Don’t be. I was  _ stupid,  _ and hasty, and I worded my wish so badly and—I just wished for him back, I didn’t wish for him to be alive, and—”

“Breathe,” Jaskier says, cutting through the ringing rising in Geralt’s ears. He sucks in a breath, and then another, forcing his hands to unclench, his jaw to loosen. 

“Breathe,” Jaskier says again. “Breathe.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” His voice stays gentle, light. Like Geralt is a scared animal, ready to lash out at any moment. He’d be frustrated at the treatment, if he didn’t think it was accurate. He thinks one wrong word might make him shatter.

“It’s not your fault that djinn are bastards,” Jaskier says. “You wished for this person back, it should’ve been obvious what you meant.”

“But I  _ knew  _ that djinn are bastards. I knew that they like to twist wishes, I saw what—what it did to you when I wished for peace.”

“And the house was about to fall down, or the crazy mage was about to die, so you didn’t have the time to carefully think out every possible way the djinn could misinterpret your wish. Right?”

He swallows again. His throat feels dry as chalk.

“It’s no excuse,” he mumbles. “I lost the one chance I had to get him back, and he doesn’t deserve—”

He bites down on his lip, staring into the fire until he can blame the burning in his eyes on the heat.

“He didn’t deserve to die,” he says at last. 

“I’m sure he didn’t,” Jaskier says. 

“He was, he was so much better than I ever was, and they—they didn’t care, they just—I came home and—”

The tears gather on his lashes and he tries to blink them back. But they fall, slipping down his cheeks, gathering up dust as they go.

Jaskier makes a soft, mournful sound next to him.

“You don’t need to talk about this,” he says. “If you—if it’s too fresh—”

“S’not. He—he died twenty-five years ago, I just—I want someone else to know about him. About Luka.”

The name hangs in the air between them, a stone waiting to be overturned, a grave waiting to be dug up. 

Jaskier grabs a shovel.

“Luka?”

And this is a moment that could shift their friendship forever. This could mark the moment that he stops seeing Geralt as  _ Geralt,  _ and starts seeing him as a grieving man, as someone that has lost something irreplaceable. But he’s kept this piece of his past clutched against himself for too long at this point. It’s time he lets Jaskier see it.

“We were taken to Kaer Morhen at around the same time. Went through training together. Went through the trials together. He was the only other one to survive the—” he gestures at his hair. “—the extra stuff. We...we understood each other. More than anyone else  _ could  _ really, because we were both so different, even from the other witchers. We were close before the trials, but afterwards—Vesemir always said we were insufferably inseparable.”

Jaskier makes a low, pained noise in the back of his throat and he holds Geralt tighter, tighter still, like he’s trying to squeeze the grief right out of him.

Geralt considers telling him the full story of his and Luka’s early years, of the older, deeper hurt that was carved into his heart before they were even married. But no. Not yet. He’s giving Jaskier enough of his pain to carry as is. So he skips ahead.

“We were married for over forty years,” he says. “I...I loved him, I loved him so  _ fucking much. _ ” 

The last few words come out as a choked sob, the tears finally breaking into his voice, and Jaskier shifts so that he can get his other arm around Geralt, pull him close, press Geralt’s face against his clavicle. Geralt wraps his arms around Jaskier’s back, grabbing his shirt in his fists, clinging as tight as he can.

“He died in the sacking of Kaer Morhen,” he says, desperate to get the story out, to let Jaskier  _ know,  _ to make him  _ understand.  _ “I was...I was away, I wasn’t  _ there,  _ I was—he broke a leg and told me to go back on the Path, and I  _ left,  _ I left him there, and the humans came and they—”

There’s something wet on the back of his neck, and Jaskier is shaking beneath him. He’s crying too. Crying for Geralt. Crying for Luka, for a man he never met and never will meet. And that’s just—it’s a fucking  _ shame,  _ because Luka would have loved him.

“—they killed him in our bed,” he says. “They cut his throat, and I  _ found  _ him there, and I—I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget what that looked like, what he looked like. I can’t get it out of my head, Jask.”

“I know.”

“I miss him.”

“I know.”

“It fucking  _ hurts.” _

“I know, I know.” The circles are back, slow and wide on his back, and Geralt gives up on words and lets himself sob into Jaskier’s chest. “Gods above, I know.”

***

There’s blood.

“Geralt.”

It’s everywhere.

_ “Geralt.” _

It’s all over Luka’s hair and he’ll hate that, once he wakes up. He’ll demand that Geralt wash and comb it until it gleams like fresh fallen snow.

“Please, pup.”

There’s a hand in Geralt’s hair and that’s not right, it’s Luka that needs help, Luka that needs care, Luka that needs fingers running through his tangles and working out the red.

“Come back to us.”

He looks down. Luka stares back at him.

“Please come back.”

But he’s asleep, isn’t he? He’s asleep, why are his eyes open?

“Please—”

“Healer,” Geralt whispers. Luka won’t stop looking at him. “He needs a healer, Vesemir, there’s something wrong with him.”

Someone is crying, someone is  _ wailing,  _ there are hands all over him, and Luka slips from his arms.

***

Geralt feels cleaner, the morning after. Fresher almost. Like a forest after a rainstorm, dust all washed away, brimming with new growth. Jaskier’s arms are tight around him and he burrows into the embrace, hiding his face in Jaskier’s shoulder and breathing him in. The smell of blood still lingers, but it’s layered over with pine and woodsmoke, familiar scents from years of camping. 

Jaskier is alive. Geralt’s foolish wish for peace didn’t kill him. Geralt’s heart didn’t kill him. Jaskier is alive, and he didn’t even shy away from Geralt’s grief. He held Geralt as he fell apart, he listened to his outpouring of anguish, and he still respected him enough to share a place in his bedroll.

He stirs under Geralt’s cheek, mumbling a bit as he comes to.

“Good morning,” he tells Geralt and it’s light, gentle but not suffocating. Acknowledging the fresh wound but not acting like Geralt’s an invalid.

“Morning,” Geralt says, uncurling himself from Jaskier’s hold. Jaskier yawns and stretches.

“Where to now?” he says, all steadiness and steadfastness. Geralt has shown him one of the greatest hurts in his life, and Jaskier still wants to follow him.

“I want to go to Kaer Morhen,” Geralt says, trying to swallow down the warmth that floods his system. “Rebury him.”

“Okay,” Jaskier says. “Do you want me to—?”

“Come with me.”

The words are out of his mouth, like so many words are, before he can think on them. But even after he speaks, he doesn’t regret them. Doesn’t want to take them back or alter them.

“Are you sure?” Jaskier asks. “I won’t be hurt if you need to do this alone.”

Geralt shakes his head.

“I don’t,” he says. “And I don’t want to.”

***

There are hundreds of graves that need to be dug. Most of them are carved out in the huge field directly behind the keep, stones nestled among the grass and dirt to mark them. But some of the bodies are carried elsewhere, to their old favorite haunts. Wild strawberry patches, lakes, small caves full of fossils or shining with crystals. Anywhere a boy might go, to get away from the world for a bit.

One thing that makes it easier. Most of the graves are small.

One thing that makes it unspeakably harder. Most of the graves are small.

Trainees. _Children._ Many of them hadn’t even gone through the trials yet, still entirely human. Some had been infants or toddlers, babies abandoned at the pass by mothers who couldn’t keep them. They’d never even held a sword. Others had already been given their yellow eyes, had already survived the most deadly trial of their lives. Only to be cut down before they could even step foot on the Path.

It’s unfair. It’s so monumentally unfair. And the grief for Luka overshadows everything else, but...

Geralt helps, just like every other witcher that ran back to Kaer Morhen as soon as word spread. Wolves, mostly, but others join them, Griffins and Vipers and even the odd Cat, their differences set aside in favor of shock and grief. He helps wash the children clean of blood, helps wrap them in soft linen, helps dig down into the cold, soft earth and lay them to rest. Murmurs prayers for a safe journey to the afterlife over each one, his tongue growing numb with repetition.

For all of this, he works alongside his fellow witchers. But there is one grave he needs to dig alone.

***

They make it to Kaer Morhen in early June, when the valley is warm and blanketed in green. Geralt’s favorite month, even now, when it’s layered with loss after loss.

Jaskier gasps next to him, taking in the ruined castle, the lush forests around it, the wildflowers bobbing in the wind.

“Not a bad view, huh?” Geralt asks him, a bit proud of his home, despite everything.

“It’s beautiful,” Jaskier says, his eyes wide. “Gods, I’m wishing I chose to study art. The  _ colors  _ here are...they defy poetry.”

“Lots of us wind up sketching in our spare time,” Geralt says, nudging Roach forward again. “Or painting.”

“Well you certainly have the inspiration,” Jaskier says. “Wait. Do  _ you  _ draw?”

“Now and again.” 

The smile that splits Jaskier’s face is nothing short of delighted.

“I’ll show you sometime,” Geralt says, and Jaskier actually squeals. 

“Oh I cannot wait. Don’t worry. I won’t compare your art to fillingless pie.”

Geralt rolls his eyes.

“How many times do I need to apologize for that comment?”

“I’ll let you know when you’ve done it enough.”

Geralt draws Roach up to the main gate and dismounts, dread coiling in his stomach. Jaskier slips to his side and squeezes his shoulder.

“Let me just tell Vesemir why we’re here,” Geralt says. “And then we can—”

His throat freezes.  _ Bury Luka. We can bury Luka. Again. _

“We can lay him to rest,” Jaskier murmurs. 

***

Lambert doesn’t even protest when Geralt says he wants to bury Luka by himself. Geralt thinks he might still be feeling guilty for his first reaction, for his  _ (more than correct)  _ blame of Geralt, for the bloody lines he clawed down Geralt’s arms. He barely meets Geralt’s eyes anymore.

He’ll need to talk to him about that. At some point. When he has enough energy to speak more than a sentence at a time.

But for now, he has work to do. Maybe the most important work of his life.

He takes his time cleaning Luka. Pouring water over the hideous gash in his neck and wrapping it with clean bandages. Spongeing the blood off of his chest. Rubbing oil into the rough calluses of his hands and feet. 

And of course, the most time is spent on his hair. Pouring jug after jug of warm water over it (and he  _ knows  _ the temperature doesn’t matter,  _ knows  _ that Luka won’t shiver or complain, but...but he wants him to be comfortable) until every trace of red is gone. And then he carefully rubs in the oil that smells like summer and detangles it with his fingers, braiding it back in a crown.

Just like their wedding day.

Just like so many days since, Luka throwing himself at Geralt’s feet and whining that his hair was  _ impossible  _ without Geralt’s touch.

This is the last time. He needs to do this right.

He needs—

He goes slowly, because every few minutes, he needs to stop and cry until he can’t breathe.

***

Vesemir isn’t the only witcher in the keep. Lambert is also here, citing troubles with his horse and a proximity to Kaer Morhen at the time of said troubles. Geralt doesn’t look at them as he tells the story of the djinn, as he tells them just how badly he failed Luka for a second time.

He expects Lambert to scream and rage, half-expects a punch in the face. Half-thinks he might deserve it. 

Instead, Lambert’s arms wrap around him, and he tugs Geralt tight against him. Geralt doesn’t return the embrace for a moment, too startled that Lambert is  _ hugging  _ him to make his arms cooperate.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so fucking—gods, I’m going to chase that djinn down and tear it to shreds.”

Geralt laughs wetly and hugs Lambert back.

“Don’t,” he says. “Was my fault. I phrased the wish badly.”

“Maybe you did,” Lambert says. “But it’s  _ not  _ your fault. None of it was ever your fault.”

Another pair of arms around him. Vesemir, solid and comforting as ever. Geralt leans into him and breathes him in, sawdust, sword oil, goat’s milk.

“Lambert’s right, pup,” he says, running his fingers through Geralt’s hair.

Geralt closes his eyes. The anxiety peels away and all that’s left is old-new grief.

“I want you with me,” he murmurs. “For the...for when we lay him back to rest.”

Lambert shudders against his shoulder.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

***

Their meadow is as peaceful and sunlit as ever. Their pine tree still stands strong, needles rustling in the breeze. Two of its children have grown up next to it, standing nearly as tall as their mother. 

Geralt sets Luka down on the sun-warmed grass. He sits down next to him, watching the breeze blow through the tall grass, listening to the chatter of larks and thrushes nestled in the branches above. Remembering all the nests of birds that he and Luka had watched grow up.

“I’m tempted to join you,” he whispers. “So tempted. You know how I am. You know how bad I am with grief.”

He closes his eyes. Feels the sun on his skin, feels the gathering summer around him. June. His favorite month.  _ Their  _ favorite month. Berries on their tongues and woodsmoke in their hair, camping under the stars.

He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to live with this. How he’s supposed to carry this.

“But I’ll stay,” he says. “I’ll stay. I promise.”

He picks up the shovel and starts to dig. He only gets about a foot down before he collapses into the dirt, shovel falling from his hands. The wave of grief cresting again.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs into his filthy hands. “I’m so, so  _ sorry,  _ sunshine.”

His only answer is birdsong.

***

They dig the grave together. Right over where it was before, returning Luka to the same bed.

It goes quicker with four pairs of hands. 

Geralt doesn’t need to stop to sob into his hands. This feels—not  _ good,  _ never good, but relieving. Absolving. He’s not apologizing to Luka for his death, he’s only apologizing for disturbing his slumber. And making it right, as best as he can.

(He doesn’t think about the rest of Luka, crushed to dust beneath a falling ceiling).

They dig until Jaskier lets out a soft exclamation of surprise, leaning down to pick up a muddy circle. Brushing aside the dirt to reveal a snarling wolf’s head.

Geralt’s breath catches in his lungs. He looked for it in Rinde, increasingly frantic, but he eventually had to accept that it was lost forever.

“Here,” he whispers, blinking back tears. “We can stop digging.”

***

Geralt slips the shroud down over Luka’s head. He keeps his gaze on his hair, refusing to linger on his sunken eyes, his blue lips, the bandage around his throat. 

He lifts his head—gently, gently, gently—and slips his medallion off. Holds it for a moment, thumbing over the scratches that time has worn into the silver. Scratches of Luka’s life.

He wants to keep this. He thinks he  _ needs  _ to keep this. Needs Luka’s strength, his guidance, his courage. More than anything, he needs his joy.

But it would be wrong to send Luka to the other side without a medallion. So Geralt pulls his own over his head and unclasps the chain to remove the wedding rings he had slid there. Holds those, too, pressing them against his lips, before slipping them onto Luka’s medallion chain. These too, he needs to keep.

He reclasps his chain, lifts Luka’s head, and drapes it around his neck. 

“And now you can have a piece of me,” he whispers, running his fingers through his husband’s hair, one last time. “Now you won’t get lonely, waiting. Because you’ll be waiting a long time. I promise.”

He leans forward, dropping a soft kiss onto the cold skin of Luka’s forehead.

“I promise.”

And then he pulls the shroud back over Luka’s face and lowers him into the earth.

***

Geralt lays the pieces of his love down, each one gentle, reverent. A careful arrangement of bone, all surrounding the medallion.

He sits back on his heels and traces his fingers over the skull. Remembers all the times he’d laid next to Luka, running his hands over his forehead, and whispered  _ tell me what you’re thinking about.  _ Remembers all the times Luka had surprised him with something beautiful and profound. Remembers all the times Luka had merely said he was planning dinner. Remembers all the times Luka had simply smiled at him and said  _ you. _

It’s an ache, still. But an almost pleasant one.

“Goodnight, sunshine,” he says. “I love you. Sorry for waking you up.”

He reaches up and lets his family pull him out of the grave.

***

The world doesn’t make sense anymore.

***

Jaskier and he walk away from Kaer Morhen the next day, the sun at their backs, the cool mountain wind toying with their hair. Jaskier is half-humming, half-singing an ode to the summer gods as he strums at his lute.

“Composing something new?” Geralt asks him. 

“Why, yes,” Jaskier says, pausing in his singing but not in his strumming. “I’m to play at the Midsummer festival in Vizima. I actually wanted to ask you if you wanted to come with me. You know. Take a break from all the monster hunting, enjoy yourself for a night.”

Geralt knows what Midsummer festivals entail. Drunken humans crowded into a tiny clearing, having sex in the bushes and gawping at him when he walks by. Not his idea of a break, by any means.

But this one, this one in particular, also entails Jaskier singing his heart out, reveling in the craft he’s perfected over decades. Something that beautiful can’t be missed.

Geralt lets himself think that. Lets himself linger on it.

Jaskier is something beautiful.

Luka’s medallion presses against his skin beneath his shirt. He remembers why he kept it, what he wanted to draw from it. Strength and guidance and courage and  _ joy. _

_ The world is yours. It’s always been yours. What are you waiting for, my thunder? _

“I’d like that.”

Jaskier’s grin sends his heart fluttering.

***

He can’t bear to sleep in his and Luka’s bed. He never will again. So instead, he sleeps next to Eskel, hides his face in Eskel’s shoulder so he doesn’t have to face the storm. Doesn’t hear a single word of the comfort that Eskel murmurs, as the days stretch into weeks.

They need to leave the keep soon. Geralt knows this. They need to get back on the Path. More than that, they can’t stay here if the humans decide to attack again.

But the idea of facing the world alone is terrifying.

***

The festival is, as Geralt predicted it would be, loud and crowded and far too much. The scents are almost overwhelming, the colors are building in his eyes like a headache, and he’s surprised that the wild revelry doesn’t bust his eardrums.

But Jaskier is here, leaning on his shoulder, grounding him. Jaskier is here, dragging Geralt to dance around the maypole with him. Jaskier is here, leading Geralt over to the rough wooden benches that surround the small stage, whispering in his ear and explaining why this bard was good, why that bard was terrible. Jaskier is here, cutting through the noise.

And Jaskier is  _ happy.  _ He’s in his element here, surrounded by people, eyes flashing, hands flashing, bright and energetic as a bolt of lightning. Geralt could spend days here, he thinks, so long as he gets to watch that happiness.

“My set is starting soon,” Jaskier says, bouncing on his feet. “I need to go around backstage. Wish me well?”

_ Courage and joy. _

Geralt steps forward, cups Jaskier’s chin in his hand, and kisses him. It’s a light thing, soft and warm and questioning. Jaskier startles, but he quickly falls into it, wrapping his arm around Geralt’s waist and tugging him closer.

Geralt lets it linger for a moment longer but then he pulls back. Jaskier’s pupils are blown wide, eating up the blue of his eyes. His face is flushed, he’s clearly shocked, but he’s smiling, wider than Geralt has ever seen before.

“Don’t mess up the chords,” Geralt grins.

“ _ Don’t mess up the chords,  _ he says. After that, you’ll be lucky if I can even play.” 

He shoulders his lute and takes a step backward.

“Meet me over by the stage when I’m done,” he says. Geralt nods, and goes back to the benches to watch.

Jaskier plays every chord perfectly.

***

A year after, Geralt finds himself in a shitty inn that is ridiculously difficult to pay for alone, staring into a mirror.

The tips of his hair are brushing his shoulders. Normally, he would have cut it long before letting it grow this much. But every time he tries to raise scissors to it, he just can’t bring himself to do it.

He doesn’t look like Luka. He doesn’t look anything like Luka. His hair is pin-straight when he washes it and a horrible, messy gray when he doesn’t. Nothing like Luka’s snow white curls.

But it’s—it’s a tribute. An homage. A reminder that he can be soft, that he can be impractical, that he can have some things for himself.

He thinks Luka would be proud of him.

***

“You didn’t mess up,” Geralt says when Jaskier runs into his arms.

“Like a single kiss would actually be enough to wipe out decades of bardic training,” Jaskier laughs. “Even a kiss from you.”

“What about several?”

“You’re welcome to try.” Jaskier bites his lip, then takes Geralt by the hand.

“The sun should be rising soon,” he says, leading Geralt through the crowd. “Let’s find a better place to watch it.”

They clamber up a grassy hill that overlooks the festival, Jaskier swearing as his fancy shoes slip again and again. Eventually, Geralt just hefts him into his arms. Jaskier squeaks, grabbing on to Geralt’s neck to steady himself.

“You’ve really gone full romance, huh?” he pants.

Geralt shrugs.

“I’ve been denying myself it for—a while now,” he says as they reach the crest of the hill. 

“You’re telling me you’ve been...feeling this way for a while now?”

“Yeah.”

He sits them both down, and Jaskier squirms off of his lap so he can shuck off his doublet. He throws it onto the grass, seemingly uncaring of the potential stains, and curls into Geralt’s side.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” he asks. There’s something vulnerable in his voice, something small and frightened, and Geralt thinks of all the times Jaskier has come to him, sobbing over heartbreak.

“I was scared,” he says. “I thought—you’ll laugh, but it seemed like destiny really wanted to destroy everyone I ever loved.”

“Why would I laugh at that?” 

“Superstition. Luck.”

Jaskier sighs. He thumbs over the back of Geralt’s hand and drops his head onto Geralt’s shoulder.

“If luck is real, then you’re the unluckiest man in the world,” he says. “And if it isn’t—then gods, people are cruel to you. The world has been cruel to you. So...please. Please let me kind.”

_ Let me have joy. Let me accept it. _

“I will,” he says. He turns to face Jaskier, desperate to show him just how much he wants this. “If you will.”

This time, Jaskier is the one to lean forward, stopping just an inch away from Geralt’s lips.

“I will,” he says, his breath whispering over Geralt’s skin. And then he kisses him, an oath, a song, a new beginning.

The sun bursts over the horizon and drenches them both in warmth. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments would be very much appreciated, and note that this is a series! I'm gonna be posting a fun, angst-with-a-happy-ending Lambert/Aiden (+Geraskier) story set in this universe at...some point soon when I get a chance to write it among all my other WIPs. So keep an eye out for that :D


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